


My Life, For You

by thatclutzsarahh



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blood, Bombing, Explosions, F/M, Gen, Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatclutzsarahh/pseuds/thatclutzsarahh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes must come to terms with the idea that his apathy is not in complete honesty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Life, For You

She exhales. And it is a long, breathy sound that pumps through her ears. Everything is distance, blurry, a facade of sound, like the beating club electro music is one wall over and all she can hear are vibrations.

Her tongue slides out and from between her lips she tastes fishy metallic, the blood of herself that's staining her sweet skin, jelly trickling over the sugar skull that is her face, edging it's way onto death's wardrobe. Knees ache to stand, feet scream to move, she is incapable of hearing anything but that buzz in her ears, the sound of her inner ear exploding against her brain, scorching it's way through bone and tissue, imprints of sounds that aren't hers.

The heels she once wore are shredded, and she can't tell if that's leather or burnt flesh that hangs from her ankle. Between the scents of burning plastic and wet pavement the battered secretary begins to piece things together. A car, an explosion, a wave of uncertainity that tosses her about like a dingy in an ocean to angry to withstand the curl of it's vicious wave. Her body is alerting her that somewhere she is leaking, and bones are broken and poking through flesh. She sees only out of one eye and torn back fingers reach for the remains of the leather of the seat she'd only slid into moments before.

There's not even an umbrella of a trace of her employer, which sinks her already slowing heart into a pit she can't seem to want to fight her way out of. The blood caked onto the pavement is a color undistinguishable, if it came down to it, she would identify her employer by the very shad of red that spilled onto the ground. She knew him so well, he was the strings to the puppet she was, and lost without him was all she could be. A burnt piece of flesh sticks out of the melted plastic near her head, and she grabs for it, only to watch it slip away from her fingers.

Arms that belong to only one man slide around her waist and they yank her back from the ocean's edge of the explosion she was teetering upon. They're suited and silk and where they should burn against open wounds they only soothe as they pull her up and to a chest that is both old and young. A scent fills her nostrils, it reminds her of the roses in her childhood home with a hint of the alcohol that he prefers that only she buys for him, in a place that he doesn't even know about. He is whispering to her but she can't hear him, it's too soft and her hearing is shot, doubted to be able to hear his sweet sounds again.

He hadn't gotten into the car. He hadn't the chance, for the moment she'd climbed in his attention and turned, and it was then that her vehicle had gone up in flames, tearing his eyes a heat that not even the Sahara knows exists. He watched in horror as her whole body ejected from the burning flames, and whether she was consciously aware she'd done it or not, she curled herself into a ball to protect her body in impact. The way her neck cracked against the pavement made his heart sink, his eyes wide, the pace of that pacemaker wired into his skin speeds up and dangerously shouts that he is too close to the edge to be this way. She lay still for so long, but her body moves like she'd never been unconscious when she wakes, a ghosting sort of phase that his him racing for her, yanking her away from flames and tar and her own body parts that are still in the wreck,

She is missing a finger on her right hand, the ring finger that is probably already disintigrated. Hair is singed from the flames, her clothes are torn where he can see a hip bone poking out from. She is in the worse shape a body can be in but she is conscious and deaf, and when he finally drags her away from the wreckage to settle her, the pair only sink to the ground, his suit ruined by her blood, by the smoke, by the universe shitting on him in the cruelest way. He would make a deal with the devil if it ensured she would come back to him in her wholeness, he needs her to be okay so that he may continue to act so painfully childish for a government man. She is his reasons and ground and he is unable to compete with reality if she is not okay.

From cracked flesh, burnt and seared lips comes a gurgle of a sound that is nothing he can even understand in English, but in their secret tongue it becomes a sign of fighting, a signal she is not going to give up on him across his suit, a price more than her salary in three years combined. The woman coughs warm blood up on his face, he flinches, but only such. How helpless he's become here, when his helpful is the one staining him with her life, bleeding away in his lap. He doesn't even know where to press, her body is a swiss cheese of a mess, with holes that she will not be able to survive.

She is not going to make it.

How does one make another comfortable in a time like this? Both parents still live, he has not experienced human death so intimately like this, especially for a woman who, for all she was supposed to be, was a secretary under his employment. A strange attachment to the young girl as made itself aware right then and there, and the apathetic statement 'i don't care what you do' suddenly becomes invalid. He cares if she dies. He cares if she leaves. He cares. She makes him care.

It's then that hands pull her out of his lap, and for the longest of moments he is unsure if it's the angels taking her away from him or the paramedics pulling her away. She is still blinking, but just, the edge of her mind a single blur of don't leave me and let me go that she can't convey because her employer is so painfully distressed as he watches her. Hands press everywhere, gauze tapes her to a back board, there is an echo of a voice calling her back to them. Her eyes peel away from him, only one is working, the other hangs limply from it's socket, bleeding onto her sugar skull cheek. She aches to let go, but one thing holds her back.

He doesn't even know her real name.


End file.
